The traditional news media is in decline. Many conservatives think this is both a good thing and the result of a populace that is increasingly rejecting its traditional biases. JLF head John Hood, a former print reporter himself, disagrees in his column today:
“The Internet” is not a news generator. It is a news transmitter or aggregator. Most of the real news you’ll find online originated from a print newspaper, TV station, or wire service. The mainstream news media actually have a greater audience than ever before in their history. The problem isn’t drawing eyeballs. It’s drawing revenue.
The traditional business model faltered not because people stopping consuming the content it produced but because new technology served to unbundled what had been an all-or-nothing product. If you were looking to find a job, buy a house, or pick up a user car, you had to buy the entire newspaper to get to the valuable classifieds.
Yup.
